Drupal beer/5@7 on Friday the 13th in Montreal!

So after some discussions we're aiming at meeting up at the bande passante (8655 St-Denis, crémazie metro) this friday at 5-6PM to hook up with the Drupal / Koumbit / Bande Passante folks in a joyful mix to meet the local scene, share experiences and discuss how to better collaborate over the Big Pond.

The informal "5 à 7 format was really nice. I met new people and got to follow-up on some really interesting conversations with people I already knew and respected. We discussed all kinds of subjects. Personally, the one that stands out was related to the dynamics surrounding the current patch review and the lack of a prioritisation process.

It started with the question of how we can try to avoid "popular" patches from sitting in the issue queue for too long. The "+1/-1" approach doesn't cut it at the moment since what we really want are reviews and comments. On the other hand, we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. We could certainly benefit from some kind of rating or prioritisation system which could, among other things, help developers identify tasks to work on.

These are murky waters since we are all far too familiar with the weaknesses/"gameability" of technocratic solutions and, IMO, because the community is leary of any discussion that could spill over into a debate about the "internal politics" within the community. The fact remains, however, that the community is getting larger all the time and there are always political dimensions when large groups of people collaborate.

The way I see it, back in the day Drupal was like a village where a typical resident had a good chance of getting to know most of the other residents and could keep an eye on pretty much everything going on. In such a situation, meritocratic (social control) systems work very well and little structure is needed. At this point, however, Drupal is like a city where there are new people coming and going all the time and where nobody can truly claim to be aware of everything happening. While meritocratic structures can still work in this context, they require tools and metrics to function.

...and this was just one of the dicussions. Anyway... when I started this comment, I just wanted to say... "yeah, it was great and I look forward to the next one".

The announcement of a beer fast for Lent made a male from Iowa famous recently. He didn't just give up beer for Lent. No, instead, J. Wilson of Des Moines gave up food and started living on beer and water just as monks did centuries ago. Here is the proof: Iowa man nears end of beer fast for Lent.